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Regional Farm & Food Project December 2006 News If you are looking for clues to the future, these news stories should interest you! 10 news stories...
+ C A L E N D E R & M I N I - C L A S S I F I E D S * * * 1. "Charlotte's Web" Holiday Movie Ticket Sales Could Benefit Your 4-H A fundraising opportunity 4-H has developed in conjunction with the live-action movie "Charlotte's Web" coming to theatres nationwide December 15. For every ticket purchased to see Paramount Pictures and Walden Media's production of "Charlotte's Web" through http://www.fourhcouncil.edu a donation of $1 will be made by Hollywood Movie Money to 4-H to support your state's 4-H program. "Charlotte's Web" features the 4-H Emblem multiple times, and the themes portrayed speak directly to the great work that 4-H does in developing youth -- building friendships, commitment to goals and having fun! It stars Dakota Fanning as Fern, and the voices of Julia Roberts, and 4-H alumnus, Reba McEntire, as well as many other noteworthy actors. * * * 2. China's Dust Raised By Cheap Cashmere Sweaters The Chicago Tribune is publishing a series of weekly articles about China and how it affects the rest of the world. Your cheap sweater's real cost ON THE ALASHAN PLATEAU, China -- Shatar the herdsman squinted into the twilight on the ruined grasslands where Genghis Khan once galloped. He frowned and called his goats. The wind tasted like dust. On the other side of the world, another morning dawned in the historic embrace between the world's low-cost factory and its best customer. Every minute of every day last year, America gobbled up $463,200 worth of Chinese goods--including millions of cashmere sweaters made from the hair of goats like Shatar's. In less than a decade, a deluge of cheap cashmere from China has transformed a centuries-old industry, stripping the plush fabric of its pricey pedigree and making it available in big-box America. Chinese-made cashmere sweaters now go for as little as $19.99. But behind the inexpensive Made in China tag is something Americans rarely see: the cascade of consequences around the world when the full might of Chinese production and U.S. consumption converge on a scarce natural resource. With all the grand ways to measure the impact of China's ascent--the mountains of exports, the armadas of oil tankers--there might seem little reason to take stock of a commodity as innocuous as cashmere. Yet the improbable connection between cheap sweaters, Asia's prairies and America's air captures how the most ordinary shifts in the global economy are triggering extraordinary change. This is the story of how your sweater pollutes the air you breathe--and how the rise of China shapes the world. The country's enormous herds of cashmere-producing goats have slashed the price of sweaters. But they also have helped graze Chinese grasslands down to a moonscape, unleashing some of the worst dust storms on record. This in turn fuels a plume of pollution heavy enough to reach the skies over North America. China's breakneck consumption of raw materials is part of an economic revolution that has lifted 400 million Chinese out of poverty but at a growing environmental cost around the globe. And with their burgeoning appetite for Chinese goods, American consumers have become crucial if unwitting partners, financing the political survival of Beijing's one-party regime. Not only has China's demand for resources proved strong enough to turn its grasslands into a dust bowl, it has driven illegal logging into prized tropical forests and restaged a risky Great Game for control of vital oil supplies. Every product--every T-shirt, every SUV, every child's toy--has a global footprint defined by the resources and energy used to make it. In the case of cashmere, America snapped up a record-smashing 10.5 million Chinese sweaters last year, 15 times as many as a decade ago, and far more than every cashmere sweater imported last year from Italy and the United Kingdom combined. It's impossible to say how much any single product contributes to China's choking air pollution. But the spike in demand for cashmere is taking a toll on the soil, air and water in China as well as the U.S.--a cost that never appears on any store's tag. And many consumers are unaware of the link. "I would never have imagined," Colleen Young said amid the bulk Cheerios and plasma TVs at a Costco on Chicago's North Side. "When you're shopping for a sweater, you would never think of pollution. Maybe the poor animal, maybe slave labor. But never pollution." Still, she gazed appreciatively at the $69.99 lavender crewneck in her hands, pulling at the Chinese-made sweater's waistline to test the quality. "That's a really good price," she said. "This is every bit as nice as the one I bought at Bloomingdale's." A grassless prairie As goats go, Shatar's are thoroughbreds--crystal-white coats, pure bloodlines and the durability to withstand China's punishing north, where summer boils to 107 degrees and winter sinks to 33 degrees below zero. Straddling the Mongolian border, far from China's throbbing cities, the Alashan Plateau produces the world's most expensive cashmere--that downy underlayer of a goat's hair that sells for at least six times the price of ordinary wool. Side by side under a microscope, Alashan cashmere makes a single human hair look like rope. Shatar, 51, who like most Chinese nomads uses one name, grew up here. He has ridden two decades of China's cashmere boom, enlarging his herd by one-third, to more than 300, and steadily pushing production. The profits have given him a small three-room house and paid for his daughter's college education. But something in Alashan has gone wrong. Shatar called his goats once more, and the animals trudged into view. Their wispy coats fluttered in the wind. They limped up a hill and slumped to the ground around him. They were starving. "Look at them. They have nothing to eat," Shatar said. Throwing handfuls of dry corn, he added, "If it keeps up this way, I'll have to sell half the animals." This stretch of China's mythic grasslands, one of the world's largest prairies, is running out of grass. The land is so barren that Shatar and other herders buy cut grass and corn by the truckload to keep their animals alive. Goats are so weak that some herders carry the stragglers home by motorcycle. Shatar expects most of his goats will live 10 years, half the life span of their parents. The animals' birthrate is sinking too. Shatar once had 100 new goats each spring. This year he got 40. Even the precious cashmere has begun to suffer. Hungry goats are sprouting shorter, coarser, less valuable fleece. Shatar crouched to grab a clump of gravelly dust from his family land. When he was young, it was carpeted in green. "Our life depends on nature," he said softly. "Things are getting worse year by year." He stood and cast aside the handful of thin, russet-colored earth. It vanished into the breeze. Cashmere goes big box The "diamond fiber," as cashmere is known in China, has shed some sparkle in the West. There are cashmere bikinis and hoodies, jogging suits and baby clothes. Target is pushing a tousled "Casual Cashmere Look." Of all cashmere products, though, nothing changed faster than the simple sweater. China sold its cashmere sweaters to America for just $34 on average last year, a full 75 percent off the import price of the Scottish version. The sudden shift from elite to everywhere has convulsed an industry that once prided itself on its posh cachet. "This growth has been truly incredible," said Andy Bartmess, chief operating officer of Scottish cashmere producer Dawson International. In a September speech to Chinese producers, Bartmess pleaded with them to halt the tumbling price. "Cashmere has a hundred-plus-year history as a luxury product," he said. "The last few years have begun to destroy that reputation." The Capra hircus, a.k.a. the goat, keeps its most valuable asset hidden. Its cashmere is combed each spring from beneath the coarse "guard hair" of the goat's outer coat. It takes two or three animals to produce a sweater, twice that for a sport coat. Many have tried to breed cashmere goats outside the bleak, harsh plateaus and mountains of Asia, but few have succeeded. That has left global supplies of the stuff at roughly 15,000 tons a year--70 percent of it from China. Until recently, not much had changed in the business since the 16th Century, when Kashmiri craftsmen spun shawls out of material delivered to India by Silk Road caravans from China, Afghanistan and northern Persia. Very little ever came from Kashmir itself, but the name stuck. By the early 19th Century, French Empress Eugenie created an icon by wearing shawls delicate enough to be drawn through a ring. In the 1870s, Scottish mill owner Joseph Dawson mechanized the processing of cashmere, and a blue-blood tradition was born. The whiff of empire endured: For decades, Chinese and Mongolian herders sold nearly all their raw fiber to Europe and the U.S. for Western mills to process and sell. Brands such as Italy's Loro Piana and Scotland's Pringle were the Western outlets for China's raw material. "The president of Dawson would come over [to Beijing] like a king and say `50 tons from here, 80 tons from there.' He would stay in the presidential suite," said Christian Murphy, the British-born managing director of Beijing-based Alphatex Knitting Co. "That's how business was done." From the grasslands to the shelf, it was a stable, stodgy business. Deng Xiaoping changed all that. In 1979 the Chinese leader launched his historic drive toward a market economy, and China's garment industry exploded. In a pattern that later would ripple through products from electronics to furniture, China swiftly claimed the bulk of the world's $350 billion textile trade. It now exports an estimated 20 billion finished garments a year--more than three pieces of clothing for every person on Earth. `Warm the Whole World' Wang Linxiang is the Henry Ford of cashmere. In 1981 he was a 30-year-old Communist Party official overseeing a lethargic state-run plant in Inner Mongolia when he set out to make as many sweaters as the West would buy. With a new name, Erdos Cashmere Co., and a new motto, "Warm the Whole World," Wang opened the age of mass cashmere production in China, ending the fabric's exclusivity. Since then, hundreds of competing companies have sprouted across China. Special industrial parks devoted to the business of cashmere have opened on the plains of northern China. "If you cooperate with us, you're 100 percent guaranteed to make money," declared Zhang Zhijun, manager of the Zuoqi Jiali Co., striding through his 1-year-old factory. Zhang was in a good mood; one of his partners, Edenweiss International, said it had just received an order for 300,000 cashmere coats from Wal-Mart. As with everything from groceries to socks, such high-volume retailers have changed the way customers think about cashmere prices. "When we negotiate and are able to reduce prices by additional purchases or large quantity, we are going to pass that along to [customers] in every case," said Jack Weisbly, a Costco executive who oversees cashmere products. "I think once the consumer was able to buy a cashmere sweater for $100, rather than $300, consumers came to appreciate and expect it." But that fierce price competition leaves cashmere industry veterans concerned. The big-box revolution is putting pressure on both their business and the land that sustains it. So many cashmere plants and other industries have opened in Alashan that authorities must ration water, forcing each factory to close for days at a time. Herders are forgetting the names of grasses that have vanished as their goats have helped denude the land. "Desertification is a big problem, and we know that all types of goats are rather voracious and tend to damage the fragile pasture," said Swiss cashmere executive Francis Patthey in a speech to Chinese suppliers. The problem is being ignored, Patthey said. And it's easy to see why. With U.S. demand at an all-time high, companies continue to build new factories and buy more expensive equipment--putting themselves deeper in debt. That glut of production, in turn, pushes prices ever lower. At Lingwu Zhongyin Cashmere, a high-end producer where workers were busy stitching Saks Fifth Avenue labels onto pale blue sweaters, executive Ma Feng said he worries that the system is overheating. "People forget this: Cashmere is not like cotton," Ma said. "It's a very limited natural resource." The limits of that resource have become impossible to ignore. Just down the street from Alashan's cashmere factories, bright yellow sand dunes rise from the horizon like an implausible movie set. Without grass and shrubs to hold the dunes in place any longer, the deserts in Alashan are expanding by nearly 400 square miles a year. The land, it seems, is reclaiming itself from the people. Making the plains bloom Not long ago, the Alashan Plateau was one of the world's least-inhabited places. The size of Colorado and Arizona combined, it is unrelentingly severe, with ridges as tall as the Rockies, seas of sand and epic grasslands straddling China's border with Mongolia. In a good year, it gets 6 to 12 inches of rain. For centuries, pastoral nomads had lived more or less as they had since Mongol tribes ruled Eurasia. They raised camels, sheep, cattle and goats, roaming to let the land recover. It was dry but dotted with rivers and small lakes. "When I was young, the whole area was green," recalled Ge Lasheng, 63, a doctor who lives near Shatar the herdsman. "There was a creek here that ran for 3 kilometers in either direction." But in the 1950s, the father of modern China, Mao Tse-tung, urged his people to open the western frontier and make the plains bloom. In the tiny grassland village of Yaoba, leaders answered the call by luring homesteaders with the slogan "Develop the prairie of Yaoba!" Ancient uses of the land changed almost overnight. Nomads were required to settle down. Villages appeared where none had existed before. Near Shatar's home, migrants arrived in 1956 and established the town of Wuliji. They dug deep wells and opened a factory to make wooden tables and chairs. Within a decade, they had chopped down all the local trees, and the factory closed. From the 1950s to the 1980s, migrants helped triple Inner Mongolia's population to 21 million. Some tried to cultivate land that had never been farmed. Many others swarmed to the fast-growing cashmere trade. By 1982, recurring droughts plagued the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, straining already arid lands. Still, national leaders pressed ahead with further development. When Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited the Erdos cashmere factory in 1990, he urged his people to expand the processing industry. Like many other herders on the Alashan Plateau, Biligedeli, 51, shifted from camels to goats, whose hair is more lucrative. "A herding family will watch what animals bring the most economic benefit," he said. But details as seemingly insignificant as the shape of a hoof or the style of eating were changing the fragile grasslands. "Have you ever done any ballroom dancing with someone who steps on your foot? The goats have stiletto heels," which break up the delicate plants that hold the dust in place, said Martin Williams, an authority on desertification at the University of Adelaide in Australia. "The camels have broad, soft pads. So a camel can tread on you and you wouldn't feel it." Goats also are expert foragers. "They graze down to lower levels and pull up stuff, where a camel would be browsing," Williams said. "The goats nibble at the bark around seedlings which transports nutrients to the plant, so once that bark has been damaged, the plant will die." Across Inner Mongolia, the number of goats soared tenfold from 2.4 million in 1949 to 25.8 million in 2004. Camels, meanwhile, declined 8 percent to 10,100. Today, China's grasslands, the world's third-largest, are turning into deserts. In just five years, from 1994 to 1999, the Gobi Desert expanded by an area larger than the Netherlands, according to the UN Environment Program. Not only does that rob farmers and herders of valuable land, but similarly eroding grasslands on the Tibetan Plateau in western China also deposit silt into the headwaters of rivers that flow to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia. Biligedeli the herder lives amid the consequences. His land is barren. Standing beside his goat pen, he stared at his ailing herd, which produced just two surviving kids this year--down from 70 a year ago. Sand as fine as talc clung to the base of scattered grass. Irrigation has further desiccated the soil. From the western edge of Biligedeli's parched plot, the wind off the plateau raked the ground and headed east--straight toward the country's industrial heartland. A plume of destruction On Sunday, April 9, Beijing residents woke to an unnerving sight: the sky was orange. A blizzard of dust hung in the wind and blanketed cars, trees and rooftops. It mixed with industrial pollution and formed a soupy cloud. Environmental officials warned children and the elderly not to open windows or go outside while the city weathered the worst air pollution of the year. Such storms are increasingly common. In the 1950s, China suffered an average of five dust and sand storms each year; in the 1970s, the average rose to 14, and in the 1990s storms struck 23 times each year, according to a 2005 study by the Asian Development Bank. That study found that for the past decade, Alashan has been the source of most sandstorms originating in China. A storm in 2002 forced 1.8 million South Koreans to seek medical help and cost the country $7.8 billion in damage to industries such as airlines and semiconductors, said the state-run Korea Environment Institute. Scientists thought that was as far as China's pollution could reach. But a wave of new research is detailing how China's dust and dirty air hurtle across the Pacific, fouling the sky, thickening the haze and altering the climate in the U.S. "We had one storm in East Asia which we called the perfect dust storm," said Barry Huebert, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii. "There are good images of it following over the Pacific as a yellow plume. When it got to Colorado, it reduced visibility enough to make the national news. It continued east, and the last measurement was in the Canary Islands" off the west coast of Africa. What scientists call trans-Pacific transport is an airborne highway of dust and pollutants. Indeed, just as China's air comes to the U.S., North American pollution traverses the Atlantic. But China's air poses particular hazards because it is some of the world's filthiest. Roughly 300,000 people die each year in China of diseases linked to air pollution, according to a Chinese research institute. The main culprit is coal. About 70 percent of China's soaring energy needs are met by coal-fired power plants. Many private homes also burn coal, combining to give China some of the world's highest emissions of sulfur dioxide, soot and other pollutants. The goats play an important role as well. Dust from the animal-ravaged grasslands of Alashan is snatched by wind and sent east, where smokestacks frost it in a layer of pollution. Together the noxious brew reaches the U.S. within five days, where it can combine with local pollution to exceed the limits of healthy air, said Rudolf Husar, an atmospheric chemist at Washington University in St. Louis. Of most concern are ultratiny particles that lodge deep in the lungs, contributing to respiratory damage, heart disease and cancer. One storm that began in China and Mongolia in spring 1998 caused a spike in air pollution that prompted health officials in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and British Columbia to issue warnings to the public. That storm was strong enough to drape a brown cloud over the West Coast. Most of the time, China's dirty dust is invisible to everyone except the growing ranks of researchers troubled by it. From China, with dust From 2,500 feet in the hills above San Francisco, Steven Cliff peers down on a spectacular range of forests, skyscrapers, clouds and sea. But Cliff and other researchers are more concerned about what lies years over the horizon. Cliff unlatched a plastic box filled with eight highly sensitive air monitors. From atop Mt. Tamalpais and other sites on the West Coast, researchers are discovering that polluted air from Asia hits the U.S. far more regularly than was believed even two years ago. "As pollution levels in Asia continue to rise, I believe that we will observe more Asian pollution in the U.S. in the future," said Cliff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Davis. Asian dust already accounted for 40 percent of the worst dust days in the Western U.S. in 2001, according to a study by researchers at NASA and Harvard. Despite efforts to reduce emissions, a top Chinese environmental official warned last year that air pollution could quadruple within 15 years because of the rapid rise in private cars and energy use in China. More Chinese pollution will make it harder and more expensive for cities like Los Angeles to meet strict federal air standards. Chinese environmental authorities recognize the damage contributed by overgrazing and are struggling to stem it. They have stitched massive checkered straw mats into the surface of the desert, dropped seeds from planes and planted millions of trees nationwide. Nothing has solved the problem. Officials on the front line of the advancing deserts are scrambling to undo the damage that got them here. In Inner Mongolia they have banned grazing on 163,000 square miles--more than a third of the province--since 2000, with broader bans to come. Other herders have been required to lock up their animals and feed them by hand. Just as the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s sent millions migrating to California, Chinese herders are moving off the grasslands to try farming and other trades. As grazing gets more difficult, China's impact on the market is reversing: the price of cashmere has begun to climb. "This year, grazing bans have cut production in growing areas by 20 percent," Zhongyin Cashmere executive Ma said amid a factory floor of humming knitting machines. "In the long run, the output is going to decrease year by year." The American cashmere industry says it cannot solve the crisis in the grasslands. The problem is "probably bigger than the industry," said Karl Spilhaus, president of the Boston-based Cashmere and Camel Hair Manufacturers Institute. "It's a government problem and a world problem." If China's measures to address the issue don't have a real impact, pollution will keep rising both within China and abroad. For a world that has come to rely on China's distant engines of production, that will bring the costs much closer to home. Yet it was easy to forget all that on the clear fall morning that Cliff checked his mountaintop sensors. A cool wind spiked the air, and cars glided back and forth across the Golden Gate Bridge. Christmas was coming, and stacks of cheap, fluffy cashmere were already in the stores. The pull of cashmere On the other side of the world, Shatar the herdsman saw no choice but to leave his land. After a long, bitter summer, the same cashmere goats that had brought him prosperity now cost him a fortune to keep alive. He was trucking grass and corn from 120 miles away, consuming the very windfall that cashmere could deliver. So Shatar and his family packed up their motorcycle and shuttered the house that cashmere built. They moved the herd 50 miles south in search of grass. He was leaving the plot where his father was born. But he would do anything to avoid resettling in a town, the fate of hundreds of other herders who are succumbing to their industry's overuse of the land. Many of those former nomads can be found in Alashan's towns, listlessly growing wheat and raising dairy cows--the nomad's equivalent of a desk job. "Herdsmen can't take farming life because we've been doing this for generations," Shatar said. In November, just two months after leaving his land, Shatar returned. He was determined not to end up like the other herders in town. Cashmere was too good to give up. Lu Jingxian and Ari Sznajder in Beijing contributed to this report. * * * 3. Youth Organics Could Use Your Help Youth Organics(Yo!) partners with the youth of Albany's South End to grow food for their families and neighbors in YO's urban gardening program, teaching them the issues of hunger, community food justice, health and environment. We are conducting a year end appeal for Youth Organics, doing a last push for $2500 for 5-6 teen employees/organizers for the late winter and spring of 2007, and for garden development. This push is very important in moving the organization to its next step of training organizers. We are working toward a three season curriculum and are building a youth movement around environment, food and health. With your help, this year we have raised almost $10,000, had a successful first year Summer Leadership Program with 15 teens, strengthened our relationships with Honest Weight Food Co-op, nearby farms and community organizations, such as Trinity Institution and Cornell Cooperative Extension. We have become an Amercorps affiliate, thus enabling the Program Coordinator to work full time and receive compensation. Will you invest $40-$100 in our 2007 youth leaders? Your investment is tax deductable via Paypal on our website http://www.gscarts.org/gdonations.html or you can mail a check(with Yo! in the memo line) to: Grand St Community Arts, 14 Wilbur St., Albany, NY 12202. You can also go into the Honest Weight Food Co-op at 484 Central Ave. to make your donation. For more info email Jess Oppenheimer at seepora@hotmail.com. * * * 4. Dairy Industry Crushed Innovator Who Bested Price-Control System By Dan Morgan, Sarah Cohen and Gilbert M. Gaul In the summer of 2003, shoppers in Southern California began getting a break on the price of milk. A maverick dairyman named Hein Hettinga started bottling his own milk and selling it for as much as 20 cents a gallon less than the competition, exercising his right to work outside the rigid system that has controlled U.S. milk production for almost 70 years. Soon the effects were rippling through the state, helping to hold down retail prices at supermarkets and warehouse stores. That was when a coalition of giant milk companies and dairies, along with their congressional allies, decided to crush Hettinga's initiative. For three years, the milk lobby spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions and made deals with lawmakers, including incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). Last March, Congress passed a law reshaping the Western milk market and essentially ending Hettinga's experiment -- all without a single congressional hearing. "They wanted to make sure there would be no more Heins," said Mary Keough Ledman, a dairy economist who observed the battle. Hettinga, who ran a big business and was no political innocent, fought back with his own lobbyists and alliances with lawmakers. But he found he was no match for the dairy lobby. "I had an awakening," the 64-year-old Dutch-born dairyman said. "It's not totally free enterprise in the United States." Most U.S. dairy farmers work within a government system set up in the 1930s to give thousands of small dairies a guaranteed market for their milk and to even out prices for consumers. Farmers who participate in regional pools operated by the federal government or the states deliver raw milk to cooperatives or food processors. They get a guaranteed price, whether the milk ends up in a gallon jug, cheese, butter or ice cream. In Arizona and other federally regulated regions, the Agriculture Department uses a formula to set the price processors pay for raw milk, issuing "milk marketing orders." Developed for a bygone era of small dairies and decentralized milk plants, the system lives on when 3,000-cow dairies are not uncommon and huge cooperatives and food companies dominate the business. Business groups, fiscal conservatives and some dairy organizations have called for Congress to overhaul the complex system of protections and subsidies, which they say is costly to taxpayers and consumers. A recent USDA study acknowledged that "dairy programs raise the retail price" of milk. The watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste estimates that the programs cost U.S. consumers at least $1.5 billion a year. The 1937 law allowed "producer-handlers" -- dairy farmers who bottle milk from only their own cows -- to operate outside the pools. But it was risky for a farm to do this because it might end up with more milk than it could sell. Most of these outsiders were small. Hettinga started out as a hired hand in the Dutch American dairies of Southern California, where his family emigrated after World War II. He soon figured out he could buy cows with injured hooves, then fix and sell them at a profit that exceeded his weekly paycheck. By the early 1990s, Hettinga was working with partners and relatives and had half a dozen dairies in Arizona and California. Then he decided to build his own bottling plant in Yuma, Ariz. His first customers were in Mexico. Later he made a deal with a chain of Arizona stores catering to the fast-growing Hispanic population. In 2002, he and his son began building a second Yuma plant to supply Costco stores in Southern California. For Costco shoppers, it was a good deal, according to an e-mail sent last year to Reid's office by Joel Benoliel, Costco Wholesale Corp.'s senior vice president. The arrangement lowered the average price of milk "by 20 cents a gallon overnight and it stayed that way for three years," Benoliel wrote in the e-mail, made available to The Washington Post. "Milk suppliers in southern California were gouging the public on price (20 cents a gallon higher than N. California) for years and were unresponsive to our call for lower prices. It was a brazen case of price gouging and profiteering by the strongest, largest market suppliers simply because they could." In Arizona, Hettinga was competing for retail sales against Arizona's biggest milk company, Shamrock Foods Co. of Phoenix. He "wasn't by any stretch a more cost-effective operator than we are. He just didn't have the same rules apply," said Shamrock's general manager, Michael A. Krueger. United Dairymen of Arizona, a cooperative that handles 85 percent of the state's milk, complained that by keeping his milk outside the Arizona pool, Hettinga was affecting the USDA price-setting formula, lowering returns for other dairies. In California, the Hettingas were taking on the two biggest players in the U.S. milk industry: Dean Foods Co., the largest processor of dairy products, with $10 billion in annual sales and five California plants, and Dairy Farmers of America, a co-op that controls nearly a third of the nation's liquid milk. In Southern California, the co-op sells to Dean Foods, which in turn sells to retailers. As Hettinga's milk began reaching Costco stores, there was a snowball effect as other milk suppliers were forced to lower their prices, Costco's Benoliel said. Dean Foods recently said that Hettinga was unfairly exploiting a "regulatory loophole" and that his actions led to lower milk prices for California dairies. Hettinga's operation was "damaging to the marketplace," said Elvin Hollon, director of economic analysis for Dairy Farmers of America. "Nobody ever envisioned there would be such large handlers" outside the pool. "So," Hollon said, "the regulations had to change." Political Education The first challenge to Hettinga came in late 2001, when Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) proposed a measure that would have forced Hettinga to pay in to the pool that Shamrock was governed by. Shamrock's chairman, Norman P. McClelland, had contributed thousands of dollars to Kyl, beginning with Kyl's first House campaign, in 1986. Hettinga fought back by printing labels saying that Kyl wanted to "limit competition and raise the cost of milk to the Arizona consumer" and putting them on 50,000 gallons of milk shipped around Arizona. In the House, Devin Nunes, a new Republican member from California's Central Valley, introduced a bill to close what he called the "regulatory loophole" that let Hettinga ship unregulated milk into California. Nunes's district is No. 1 in milk production in the nation. Nunes and Sons dairy, located a few miles north of Tulare, was started by Nunes's grandfather and was still in the family. In Nunes's first run for Congress, in 2002, he pulled in $130,000 from dairy interests, second only to President Bush among federal candidates, election records show. Nunes's bill and Kyl's amendment initially went nowhere. So Kyl, a conservative Republican, found an unlikely ally in Reid, then the Senate's fiercely partisan Democratic whip. Reid was no newcomer to dairy issues. Nevada's population was growing faster than its dairies could supply milk, so prices tended to be high. Milk plants that had to import milk from far away thought they could get it cheaper if they did not have to pay regulated prices. In 1999, Reid helped them out. He slipped an amendment into a spending bill exempting milk plants in the Las Vegas area from federal pricing rules. David Coon, vice president of Anderson Dairy Inc., then the area's largest milk plant, hailed Reid's amendment as a "good example of the good we feel he has done fighting for our state." Reid later listed Anderson as one of 51 "soft money" donors to his Searchlight Leadership Fund, which funds Democratic candidates in Nevada. The 1999 provision still left the Las Vegas area subject to some federal milk regulations. By 2003, fixing that had become a pressing concern as Dean Foods began construction on a $40 million, state-of-the-art milk plant outside town. That year, Reid and Kyl saw they could make a deal. Kyl agreed to back removing all of Nevada from federal milk regulation, and Reid agreed to support legislation cracking down on Hettinga and protecting Arizona dairies from competition from low-priced Nevada milk. In 2003, the senators co-sponsored an amendment with both provisions. In effect, Nevada bottlers would get some of the same rights that were being taken away from Hettinga. Under this arrangement, the money the Yuma dairyman would save by operating outside the federal system would have to be paid in to the pool. Getting Around Lewis In 2003, Hettinga still looked the part of a hard-working dairy farmer. He wore jeans, lunched on fried chicken and salad at the Hometown Buffet in Yuma, and seldom took a vacation. But he was no longer a little guy. He owned a private plane and kept a pilot on standby. His 16 dairies stretched from Texas to California, and his company, Sarah Farms, supplied nearly a fifth of Arizona's liquid milk. As Kyl and Reid were putting together their deal, a milk-industry friend put Hettinga in touch with a Washington lobbyist, former representative Raymond J. McGrath (R-NY). McGrath, who was president of the National Republican Club of Capitol Hill, had retained good connections in GOP circles. During a swing through Capitol Hill with McGrath, Hettinga pitched his cause to House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.). Lewis's district was home to some large dairies, including a Hettinga dairy in San Jacinto. The two men had never before met or talked, according to Lewis's spokesman. But Lewis was sympathetic. "This is not right, taking a rifle shot at one individual," Hettinga recalls Lewis saying. A few months later, Lewis used his power to kill the Kyl-Reid measure. "Congressman Lewis did it strictly on behalf of a constituent and because he thought Hein's deal was good for consumers," said Lewis's deputy chief of staff, Jim Specht. Hettinga said that at Lewis's request he chipped in $2,000 to the Bush-Cheney campaign later that year. He also gave $4,000 to Lewis's campaign war chest between 2003 and 2006, records show. But the big milk producers and dairy trade groups were already at work in Washington. Through its employees and political action committee, Dean Foods, with nearly 100 plants around the country, spent more than $600,000 on political contributions in 2005 and 2006, including $5,000 to Kyl and $3,000 to Nunes. Reid got $5,000 in 2004. Eight groups with an interest in the legislation reported overall lobbying spending of more than $5 million in 2005 and the first half of 2006. Dean Foods reported spending almost $2.5 million, including $500,000 for outside lobbyists. One was Charles M. "Chip" English Jr. of Thelen Reid & Priest. English also represented Shamrock Foods, United Dairymen of Arizona and the Dairy Institute of California. During 2005, English fine-tuned the language in the milk bill. "My hand can be seen throughout the bill," he said in an interview. Pick a paragraph in the legislation, he said, and "either I wrote it or I commented on it." Among others in the lobbying effort were the International Dairy Foods Association, the National Milk Producers Federation and the Western United Dairymen. Dairy Farmers of America, with members in 47 states, mobilized a grass-roots campaign for the legislation. At every turn, Lewis's office was "barraged by calls and faxes from dairy owners," recalled Specht, Lewis's aide. "It seemed clear that all the skids had been greased for this legislation." An Angry Meeting On the evening of Nov. 2, 2005, lawmakers and several dozen lobbyists squeezed into the conference room of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to seek common ground in the milk dispute. Lewis brought Hettinga and McGrath. Reid came with Anderson's Coon. Shamrock Foods' McClelland was with Kyl. "Jerry, if it wasn't for you, we'd have taken care of this a long time ago," Reid said, according to several participants. Lewis bridled. It seemed as if Reid was calling him a "liar," he said. If that was so, he might as well leave, he added. Hettinga told the group how he had built his plants, arguing that the other dairy farmers "didn't pay me when I started the business, why should I start paying them when the business is successful?" At the end, participants said, Reid was plainly exasperated. "I'm not listening to any more of this," he said. "I'm out of here." Reid made his move on Dec. 16, with the Senate chamber nearly empty. He brought up the milk bill, which passed a few minutes later by "unanimous consent," a procedure that requires no debate or roll call vote if both political parties agree. Reid and Kyl said in recent statements that their goal was to level the playing field for milk producers. That set the stage for a bitter battle in the House, pitting Nunes, the new California-dairy-district congressman, against Lewis, then a 14-term veteran with friends on both sides of the aisle. Lewis used the muscle of his 66-member Appropriations Committee, the dispenser of billions of dollars a year in spending. But he faced the nearly unified front of the dairy lobby and its friends. Virginia dairy farmers had helped win the key support of Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the Agriculture Committee, convincing him that if Hettinga were brought into line, the threat "would be less likely to show up back here," said lobbyist Charles Garrison. Nunes was a protege of House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.). And he had recently backed John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) in his successful campaign for majority leader. In late March, Boehner placed the bill on a special docket usually reserved for uncontroversial measures such as naming post offices. Under that docket, bills require a two-thirds majority for passage. But the parliamentary procedure also meant that no one could offer an amendment to slow the bill down. McGrath, Hettinga's lobbyist, watched the vote from the Capitol Hill Club. After Lewis came up 13 votes short and the bill passed, McGrath recalled, a large contingent of dairy lobbyists arrived, some trading high-fives. Lewis was to have had dinner at the club with his wife, but when he showed up and saw the lobbyists celebrating, he turned and left. In an interview later, Nunes called the milk legislation a victory for "every dairy farmer in America except those who were gaming the system." He added, "People out there were making millions of dollars a year off the backs of America's dairy farmers . . . that was a wrong that was finally righted." The next morning, lawmakers in dairy districts who voted against the dairy groups got an e-mail from a lobbyist expressing "disappointment on behalf of the members of the International Dairy Foods Association for your vote." It added: "We will be letting our member companies and their employees know of the outcome." Hettinga vowed to keep supplying his customers in Arizona and California even though the new law required him to pay the Arizona pool what he said was a "crippling" sum of up to $400,000 a month. "The irony is that Hein is paying his competitors," said Alfred W. Ricciardi, Hettinga's Phoenix lawyer. Hettinga and his relatives gave nearly $20,000 to Kyl's Democratic challenger this year. Kyl won handily and got his own dairy industry support: A few weeks before Senate action on the milk bill, 11 officials of Shamrock contributed $14,800. Hettinga also turned to the courts. In October, he filed a lawsuit charging that the milk bill was unconstitutional because it was aimed at penalizing a single individual. "I still think this is a great country," Hettinga said. "In Mexico, they would have just shot me." Research editor Alice Crites, research database editor Derek Willis and staff researcher Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report. View all comments that have been posted about this article at http://www.washingtonpost.com Market Research on Milk * * * 5. Bill McKibben and Friends Organize Nationwide Day of Climate Rallies Dear Friends— This is an invitation to help start a movement--to take one spring day and use it to reshape the future. Those of us who know that climate change is the greatest threat civilization now faces have science on our side; we have economists and policy specialists, courageous mayors and governors, engineers with cool new technology. But we don’t have a movement—the largest rally yet held in the U.S. about global warming drew a thousand people. If we’re going to make the kind of change we need in the short time left us, we need something that looks like the civil rights movement, and we need it now. Changing lightbulbs just isn’t enough. So pitch in. A few of us are trying to organize a nationwide day of rallies on April 14. We hope to have gatherings in every state, and in many of America’s most iconic places: on the levees in New Orleans, on top of the melting glaciers on Mt. Rainier, even underwater on the endangered coral reefs off Key West. We need rallies outside churches, along the tide lines in our coastal cities, in cornfields and forests and on statehouse steps. Every group will be saying the same thing: Step it up, Congress! Enact immediate cuts in carbon emissions, and pledge an 80% reduction by 2050. No half measures, no easy compromises—the time has come to take the real actions that can stabilize our climate. As people gather, we’ll link pictures of the protests together electronically via the web—before the weekend is out, we’ll have the largest protest the country has ever seen, not in numbers but in extent. From every corner of the nation we’ll start to shake things up. By its very nature, this action needs all kinds of people to help out. We can’t make it happen—it has to assemble itself. Email us at StepItUp07@gmail.com, and say ‘here’s where I live—I want to help organize.’ We’ll coordinate the responses, introducing you to others from your area, and give you everything you need to be a leader, from banners to press releases. You don’t have to have ever done anything like this—you’re not organizing a March on Washington, just a gathering of scores or hundreds in your town or neighborhood. We need creativity, good humor, commitment. If you are active in a campus group or a church or a local environmental group or a garden society or a bike club—or if you just saw Al Gore’s move and want to do something—then we need you now. And by now, we mean now. The best science tells us we have ten years to fundamentally transform our economy and lead the world in the same direction or else, in the words of NASA’s Jim Hansen, we will face a “totally different planet,” one infinitely sadder and less flourishing. The recent elections have given us an opening, and polling shows most Americans know there’s a problem. But the forces of inertia and business-as-usual are still in control, and only our voices, united and loud, joyful and determined, can change that reality. Please join us. Bill McKibben * * * 6. What's Wrong When Stock Market and Hunger Both Hit All Time Highs? Wealth Disparities Growing Worldwide The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. As income inequality reaches record levels in most countries, including the U.S., the distribution of wealth – such as stocks, bonds, and land – is becoming even more concentrated, according to a new report from the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the United Nations University released on December 5, 2006. In 2000, just 37 million people, the top one percent of the world’s population, controlled about 40 percent of the world’s net worth and the top 10 percent held 85 percent of the world’s assets. Meanwhile, the bottom half of the population owned a mere 1.1 percent of global wealth and the gap is widening. Americans have more than their share. In 2000, the United States accounted for 4.7 percent of the world’s population but 32.6 percent of the world’s wealth. “We use the term [wealth] in its long-established sense of net worth: the value of physical and financial assets less debts,” said James Davies, a professor of economics at the University of Western Ontario and one of the report’s authors. “In this respect wealth represents the ownership of capital. Although capital is only one part of personal resources, it is widely believed to have a disproportionate impact on household well-being and economic success, and more broadly on economic development and growth.” For additional details, go to: http://www.wider.unu.edu/research/2006-2007/2006-2007-1/wider-wdhw-launch-5-12-2006/wider-wdhw-press-release-5-12-2006.pdf. Mayors Report Hunger Growing in American Cities Requests for emergency food assistance rose an average of seven percent in 2006, with three-fourths of American cities reporting an increase, according to the annual survey of hunger and homelessness released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) on December 14, 2006. All of the 23 cities in the survey reported that families and individuals are relying on emergency food sources not just in emergencies but as a regular source of food over long periods of time. “This survey represents real people with real needs in cities across our nation,” said Trenton, NJ Mayor Douglas Palmer, president of the USCM. “As mayors of cities in the richest and most powerful nation in the world, we cannot simply stand by as our residents – families with children – continue to suffer. We have a responsibility to work together with our federal partners, as well as the private sector to turn the tide of those most in need in America.” Among the survey findings:
USCM members called for action to alleviate hunger and homelessness, as 2006 was the 16th consecutive year that an increase in hunger was reported and 2007 looks no better, as 72 percent of cities believe hunger will increase next year. “The results of this report shed light on a very real challenge facing this nation,” said Franklin Cownie, Mayor of Des Moines, IA. “To attack this problem in a coordinated manner, we cannot ignore the fact that additional funding is needed. If we are to truly change the condition of those who are chronically hungry and homeless, we must act now.” Besides Des Moines and Trenton, cities participating in the survey were: Boston, MA; Charleston, SC; Charlotte, NC; Chicago, IL; Cleveland, OH; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Kansas City, MO; Los Angeles, CA; Louisville, KY; Miami, FL; Nashville, TN; Norfolk, VA; Philadelphia, PA; Phoenix, AZ; Portland, OR; Salt Lake City, UT; San Francisco, CA; Santa Monica, CA; Seattle, WA; and St. Paul, MN. To read the USCM news release and access the survey results, go to: http://www.usmayors.org/uscm/news/press_releases/documents/hhsurvey_121406.pdf. * * * 7. Ag News Clips Website Keeps Activists Up-To-Date AgClips provides a roundup of agriculture and rural development news from the regional offices of The Council of State Governments, and State Agriculture and Rural Leaders. http://www.agandruralleaders.org/agclips.htm * * * 8. History Repeats Itself: More Farmers Seek Subsidies as U.S. Eats Imported Produce By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO FRESNO COUNTY, Calif. - For decades, the fiercely independent fruit and vegetable growers of California, Florida and other states have been the only farmers in America who shunned federal subsidies, delivering produce to the tables of millions of Americans on their own. But now, in the face of tough new competition primarily from China, even these proud groups are buckling. Produce farmers, their hands newly outstretched, have joined forces for the first time, forming a lobby group intended to pressure politicians over the farm bill to be debated in Congress in January. Nobody disputes that competitive pressures from abroad are squeezing fruit and vegetable growers, whose garlic, broccoli, lettuce, strawberries and other products are a mainstay of world kitchens. But the issue of whether the United States ought to broaden farm subsidies beyond the commodity crops like corn and cotton, which have historically been protected, is a big flashpoint. "This is like the tectonic plates of farm policy shifting, because you have a completely new player coming in and demanding money," said Kenneth A. Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, a research group in Washington that has been critical of farm subsidies, which are mandated by federal laws that date to the Great Depression. Although some farmers may be suffering, American consumers have been big beneficiaries of cheap food imports. On the United States wholesale market, for example, Chinese garlic costs almost half the price of garlic that is grown domestically. Existing American farm subsidy policies have been the subject of violent protests outside some World Trade Organization meetings, with detractors calling them an antique way of subsidizing United States farmers at the expense of poorer ones. American fruit and vegetable growers, with their much smaller farms, have never been part of this debate, in part because their crops yielded higher returns, did not need much support, and were never organized around a single policy goal. But times have changed. Here in the fertile San Joaquin Valley, Mike Mantelli has seen firsthand the substantial changes forced by the rising tide of Chinese garlic into the United States. As the general manager of the largest American garlic company, Christopher Ranch, he remembers when there were 1,200 acres of garlic planted on a 6,000-acre farm here a decade ago. Today the company plants less than 300 acres because of lower demand for California garlic, he said. "The Chinese garlic totally caught us off-guard and knocked us down," Mr. Mantelli said recently as he checked on newly planted garlic bulbs. "I think our industry has hit rock bottom. Maybe now we can figure out how to make it a level playing field." So Mr. Mantelli has joined the coalition of about 75 growers of specialty crops who have united to grab a much bigger slice of the federal subsidy pie. The group, representing growers of everything from broccoli to strawberries to nuts and flowers and wine, submitted a bill in September asking for what most likely would amount to more than $1 billion for programs they say could help their crops compete better in a tougher global marketplace. The farmers are not asking for the kind of direct subsidies that have been accused of distorting trade and hurting developing countries' agricultural industries. Hoping to avoid a nasty battle with powerful farm-state politicians in the Midwest and Southeast, they are asking instead for money to help market their products at home and overseas, as well as for research and conservation. But whatever money the fruit and vegetable farmers might get would probably have to come out of the allocation that already goes to other sorts of farmers. As things stand, the federal farm subsidy program supplies more than $15 billion a year, primarily to growers of five crops: corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans. Those crops are considered interchangeable commodities and are traded on world markets, unlike fruits and vegetables, which are called specialty crops because their taste and quality are viewed as being highly variable. While some vegetable and fruit groups have previously requested more funds, they have never before mounted a united challenge. "This is the first time these groups have weighed in with a sense of organization and commitment," said Clayton Yeutter, a former agriculture secretary and United States trade representative. The current agriculture secretary, Mike Johanns, looks favorably on the produce growers' bill. The legislation also has the advantage that the farmers come from states with sizable representation in Congress. Still, the proposal is likely to face a tough road. There are many other federal budget priorities, and farm experts say there will probably be less money allocated to the farm bill next year than in 2002, when there was a huge increase. Further, while commodity growers are making courteous noises about the fruit and vegetable farmers' requests, they have historically enjoyed a near monopoly on federal subsidies. But fruit and vegetable farmers have been gaining influence. The group's combined cash receipts of $52.2 billion rival or exceed those of the five major commodity crops, which are expected to generate $52 billion this year. The produce farmers can also point to the competitive situation. California growers once dominated the garlic industry in the United States, but imports from China and Hong Kong have increased from less than 1 million pounds in 2000 to 112 million pounds last year. This year, for the first time, more Chinese garlic will be sold in the United States than California produces, Commerce Department figures show. China's farmers, who are broadly subsidized, have the advantage in that their nation's currency, the yuan, is tightly regulated to maximize trade opportunities. And the country has a glut of workers for the labor-intensive jobs of growing and harvesting fruits and vegetables. "Of course consumers are benefiting now," said Peter Morici, an economist at the University of Maryland business school and a former chief economist at the United States International Trade Commission. "But competition should not be based on subsidies." Other specialty crop groups are also struggling with foreign competition, in particular from China, which has geared its agriculture industry towards labor-intensive, higher-value fruits and vegetables. China has begun to dominate everything from apples to onions. Chinese exports have also eaten into American growers' share of markets in Japan and Hong Kong for items like broccoli and lettuce. Fruit and vegetable growers have the political advantage of being in states like California, Florida and Arizona, which are likely to be critical in the 2008 presidential election. But it is unclear how important the farm vote will be to the Democrats in the next election. Under the proposed bill, an overseas marketing program would rise 75 percent, to $350 million a year. An existing specialty crop block-grant program would leap tenfold to $500 million a year. And the government would buy at least $400 million worth of fruits and vegetables annually for school lunch programs. While the total cost of the proposed bill has yet to be tallied, it will probably reach a few billion dollars, coalition officials said. Whether the fruit and vegetable farmers can win that much will depend in large part on just how much money Congress allocates to farm spending next year. If the farmers get what they want, consumers could benefit from more information and choice at the grocery store, said Professor Morici of the University of Maryland. At the same time, American growers could become more efficient and competitive. "Things that help farmers band together and compete are not inherently protectionist or harmful," Professor Morici said. "It is not an unreasonable thing for a fragmented industry to ask the government for assistance to make the virtues of their industry better known." He added, "Whatever money they put for research would benefit the consumer. That would run down their price, and eventually that information would get around the world." Mr. Johanns, the agriculture secretary, said in a speech last month that American farm policy needed to be "equitable, predictable and beyond challenge." Noting the fruit and vegetable farmers' proposal, he said that farm programs could no longer be decided among a few commodities in a few parts of the country. "That day has changed," Mr. Johanns said. The vegetable and fruit growers stood by silently for decades in large part because they did not need government assistance to be successful. While generating close to half of farm receipts, the specialty crops are grown on just 11 million acres of farmland, versus 215 million for the major commodity crops. In California, new financing could not come soon enough for garlic farms like the Christopher Ranch. The Christophers, fourth-generation farmers in the state, have struggled to hold their market share, and it is not hard to see why: On the wholesale market, Chinese garlic recently cost $15 to $16 for a 30-pound box, compared with $28 for a box of California garlic. In the late 1990s the Christopher Ranch's garlic production peaked at about 100 million pounds. Since then sales and acreage have fallen by more than 40 percent. In 2001 China began flooding the market with garlic, after managing to find ways around an import tariff of 377 percent. As the demand for their garlic has fallen, the Christophers have turned to growing crops like pearl onions and shallots. The family hired a trade lawyer in Washington to try to battle tariff violations. Now they hope that the proposed crop bill will give them a chance to educate consumers and pay for more research into crop diseases. "We don't want handouts," Mr. Mantelli said. "You don't want to just give people subsidies, because nobody learns from subsidies. But you want to give them opportunities and resources and tools to make their industry better." Copyright 2006, The New York Times Company * * * 9. Come to the Farm & Food Network Meeting Wednesday, January 17 Regional Farm & Food Project Annual Member Meeting & Board Elections + Farm & Food Network Meeting Please join us for thoughtful conversation, business networking and social refreshment. Farmers, food entrepreneurs, activists, advocates and policy-makers welcome! Wednesday, January 17, 6:00-9:00 pm We will have a short business meeting, including RFFP board elections, followed by Farm & Food Network Pod updates and networking. We will have our own dining room and wait staff at Brown’s. Attendees pay for their own food and beverages. No purchase is required. Please RSVP by January 15. Call 518-271-0744 to confirm your attendance so we can advise Brown’s as to how many waiters our meeting requires. Thank you. * * * 10. New Local Foods Processor in the Works for Schenectady Announcing an innovative community food project called the Hamilton Hill Food Processing project (HHFP). The HHFPP aims to develop a food processing and packaging business in the low-income neighborhood of Hamilton Hill of Schenectady, NY, to increase the amount of produce in the neighborhood, increase market access for small to midsize farmers, and provide some employment and economic development for the community. Hunger Action Network of NYS (HANNSY) is conducting this survey below to assess family farms what local produce is available, what surplus of produce is available if any, and ultimately to find growers who would be interested in producing specific crops for us. HANNYS was established in 1982 as a statewide anti-hunger coalition that combines grassroots organizing at the local level with state level research, education and advocacy to address the root of hunger and its causes, including poverty. Hamilton Hill Food Processors project summary: The project will purchase locally grown food as well as produce from regional distributors to process, package and sell as canned produce. The business will produce a diverse array of products including bread spreads such as garlic spread, bruschetta and jams, and canned vegetables. According to our survey of Hamilton Hill residents, fruit and vegetables were sorely lacking within their neighborhood, especially culturally appropriate items. Our partners include Honest Weight Food Coop, SICM, Rock Hill Bakehouse, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Hometown Foods, LLC. and the Altamont Program. We are currently at the stage of developing a full business plan for the project. The finished products will be sold to two different constituencies, namely low-income households within Hamilton Hill at a discount, and to moderate and higher income consumers via local coops and farmers’ markets. Please fill out the enclosed form and return it by email to seepora@hotmail.com to assist us in gathering information for this project and to assist us in investing in our family farms. Please feel free to call (518) 434-7371, ext. 2, Jessica Oppenheimer, Community Food and Garden Coordinator with any questions. Hamilton Hill Food Processors Survey Farm Name Contact Name Street Address City/Town Zip Phone Number(s) 1) What crops do you grow and which method (IPM, organic, low spray, etc)? 2) Do you have surplus produce, if so what? Would you be interested in an avenue for selling surplus produce at a reduced cost? 3) Would you be interested in growing specific crops for Hamilton Hill Food Processors? We are currently still in the research phase of the project, but are looking for some of the following produce: garlic, collard greens, summer squash, tomatoes and fruits for jams. http://www.hungeractionnys.org/ * * * + C A L E N D E R & M I N I - C L A S S I F I E D S Friday & Saturday, January 5 & 6: New York State Maple Conference The conference is open to the general public, as well as maple producers, and is geared toward all levels of sugar makers. Friday features a speaker at 7:00 PM. Saturday’s trade show opens at 8:00 AM with workshops starting at 9:00AM. The conference is sponsored by the V.V.S. FFA in conjunction with the New York State Maple Producers Association and Cornell Cooperative Extension. Cost of the conference is as follows: Friday and Saturday package when pre-registered $30, Friday only $12, Saturday only $22 for pre-registered or $30 at the door. For more information on conference topics, presenters, and to register, contact V.V.S. FFA advisor Keith Schiebel at (315) 829-2520 ext. 262, email kschiebel@vvsschools.org Friday, January 12, 7:30 pm: "Reinventing the Commons", A Talk by Peter Barnes Peter Barnes is author of the new book "Capitalism 3.0: A Guide to Reclaiming the Commons". He co-founded Working Assets Long Distance and several other socially responsible businesses. Tickets are $5 at the door. For more information visit http://www.clandtrust.org or call 413-528-1737. Saturday, January 13, 6:00 pm: Shepherd's Potluck Sheep Breeders Winter Gathering at the Centenary United Methodist Church in Greenwich, NY (on Church St., in front of the elementary school). Please bring a potluck covered dish, vegetable, or dessert. So bring your favorite recipes and we encourage the use of LAMB! Seminars: Poulin Grain Company Representative, Sheep & Flock Nutrition. Please call the Extension/4-H office (746-2560 or 1-800-548-0881) to pre-register for this event and tell us what you are bringing by January 12. Thursday, January 18 - Saturday, January 20: 2007 NYS Farmers' Direct Marketing Conference "The Food Less Traveled: How Local Food Contributes to Healthy People and Healthy Communities", will be held at the Owego Treadway Inn in Owego, NY on January 18-20, 2007. This conference will bring together the agricultural industry with the health, diet and nutrition community to learn how these professions can learn from one another, support each other and benefit our communities through collaborative efforts. Co hosts for "The Food Less Traveled" Conference are the New York State Farmers' Direct Marketing Association, Farmers' Market Federation of NY, NY Farms!, NY Small Scale Food Processors, Cornell's Community, Food and Agriculture Program, Cornell's Farm to School Program, Cornell's Small Farms Program, CADE, CNY RC& D, and Cornell Cooperative Extension. For more information, contact Diane Eggert at 315-475-1101 or diane99@dreamscape.com or Martha Goodsell at nyfarms@clarityconnect.com. Saturday, January 20: Vermont Grazing Conference The eleventh annual Vermont Grazing Conference will have a little bit of everything: eighteen workshops in six topic areas, speakers from the East and West coasts, hands-on activities, a terrific Vermont-grown lunch, and grazing resources galore. Organized by the Vermont Pasture Network at the UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture, the Vermont Grass Farmers' Association (VGFA), and other organization and farm partners, the conference will take place at Vermont Technical College. Speaking to this year's theme of "Overcoming Obstacles to Direct Marketing" will be keynote Mark McAfee, farmer and founder of Organic Pastures Dairy Company (OPDC) in Fresno, California. McAfee and his family sell certified organic, certified raw, pastured milk. Registration is $35 for VGFA members and $50 for non-members. Each additional person from the farm or family pays $5 to attend. Lunch is available for $10 per person. For more information, please contact Jennifer Colby at the UVM Center for Sustainable Agriculture at (802) 656-0858, (802) 656-5459 or jcolby@uvm.edu. A conference brochure and online registration can be found at http://www.uvm.edu/~pasture. January 26-28, 2007: Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York 25th Annual Winter Education Conference: Building the Farm Economy Around Local Foods Saturday, January 27, 2007, 8:00am – 5:00pm: NOFA-NJ’s 17th Annual Winter Conference, GREENER FIELDS, GREENER PASTURES: Sustaining Farms, Farmers! and Communities SEEKING ASSISTANT FARM MANAGER POULTRY MANURE AVAILABLE SEEKING FARM FRESH FOODS IN MANHATTAN PHILLIES BRIDGE FARM SEEKS 4 INTERNS
Compensation: $800 monthly stipend, along with produce and eggs from the farm, is provided to all interns. On-farm housing in a furnished cottage is available to one of the interns or a couple. Preference is given to the intern with the longest position duration. Interns who live off the farm are given an additional $400 “housing stipend”, increasing their total monthly stipend to $1200. To Apply: Send letter, resume, and names and phone numbers of 3 references to: Farmers, 45 Phillies Bridge Road, New Paltz, NY 12561 or info@philliesbridge.org. Call (845) 256-9108 for more information. FARM MANAGER WANTED AT ACCOKEEK GLYNWOOD CENTER SEEKS FARM INTERN Visit our website at http//:www.glynwood.org. |
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